SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—There’s lots of predictions about where television and premium video are headed. Then again, “There’s a lot of things that are actually already happening, probably more in some ways than a wider industry lens might understand,” says VideoAmp’s Jay Prasad.
This is why Prasad reflects on this year’s Retreat in this interview as “a small and purposely put together group like this where there’s a lot of people who are working together or thinking about working together and able to share ideas.” He says he prefers learning from “power panel sessions” than typical one-hour conference sessions “with everyone repeating themselves on a panel. It doesn’t happen here.”
Aside from Puerto Rico’s natural beauty, Prasad notes the Retreat location in the context of the devastation that Hurricane Maria caused in the fall of 2017 and the ongoing rebuilding. One element of the Retreat was dedicated to raising awareness of the short- and long-term impacts on residents and the marketing world.
“It definitely seemed like Andy and the team here really wanted to make sure that we understood that and there was a connection to it,” he says. “When you put that all together, I thought it was a really special few days.”
The time was shared with “so many partners across the ecosystem and clients that we’re working with. Maybe two years ago I would have looked across the room and said it would be great to be doing this with that company, trying to connect this supply source with this data so that this advertiser can execute. And now it’s actually kind of happening.”
Prasad describes “a really busy last two years” in which VideoAmp has been assembling its marketing investment platform, which encompasses data-driven, cross-screen planning and measurement, activation and programmatic. This year, the company acquired TV-data processing provider IronGrid Data Services, which when combined with a partnership with Inscape formed the basis for the new Data & Emerging Products Division, as Variety reports.
“So next is going to be taking all of these pieces of technology and solutions and making sure they’re optimizing to work together so that one piece of our system, like the measurement system, is actually informing how you should be planning,” says Prasad.
He clarifies that it’s not planning to determine a particular dollar spend for a particular medium “but actually event-level forecasting. Which means that we’re also going to be more tightly working with big media companies and suppliers and supply side technology to make that happen.”
This video was produced in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the Beet.TV executive retreat. Please find more videos from the series on this page. The Beet Retreat was presented by NCC along with Amobee, Dish Media, Oath and Google.
